BBC“Even if he is acquitted, it will not leave him. He’ll be cancelled for the rest of time,” Patrick Gibbs KC, defending Slowthai, told the jury.
As the not guilty verdicts were read out by the foreman, the rapper collapsed in tears in the dock – he had just been acquitted of three counts of rape following a three-week-long trial at Oxford Crown Court.
In that moment, most people in that court room, including the rapper’s friends and family, were focussed on the relief and joy of those two words – “not guilty”.
But over the coming weeks, Slowthai – whose real name is Tyron Frampton – will begin to plot a course to overcome his ”cancellation”, and regain his status as one of UK rap music’s most celebrated artists.
The rapper released his first album in 2019.
He has since gone on to release two more critically acclaimed albums, including 2023’s UGLY – which received a five-star review from the NME’s Thomas Smith, who called it the rapper’s “most exhilarating project to date from front to back”.
But soon after the release of his third album, the Grammy-nominated rapper was charged with rape.
He was quickly removed from the line-up of Glastonbury Festival, as well as Reading and Leeds, soon after.
Fast forward 18 months, and he has been cleared of those charges by a jury of his peers – and is now free to re-start his music career.
Marcus Johnstone, who is a criminal defence solicitor specialising in sexual offences, explains: “Winning a criminal case [and being found not guilty] is often not the end, but the start of the real problem actually.”
“Celebrities in particular experience being ‘cancelled’ when they find themselves accused of a sex crime.”
“They go from hero to zero overnight.”
In predicting how any Slowthai comeback could be received, it may be useful to look at similar cases.
In 2019, JLS star Oritse Williams stood trial accused of raping a woman in his hotel room after a concert in Wolverhampton.
Williams stressed in court that the encounter had been entirely consensual – and was unanimously acquitted after just two hours of jury deliberations.
Two years later, JLS reformed for a 29-date comeback tour that saw the band perform to a more than 350,000 people.
The musician, who has also released his own solo music since being acquitted, has seen his career climb back to, and even possibly exceed, its previous heights since his trial five years ago.
PA MediaOn the other end of the spectrum is the English singer-songwriter Rex Orange County.
The musician was widely regarded as a darling of modern indie music, and had released critically acclaimed albums that reached the top ten in both the UK and US charts, before being charged with six counts of sexual assault in 2022.
All charges against him were dropped later that year, but the singer decided to take a two-year hiatus from music – which ended earlier this year with the release of his fifth studio album, The Alexander Technique.
The album has failed to garner anywhere near as much interest as his previous efforts though, spending just one week in the UK album chart and only reaching 151 in the US.
Despite seeing off the charges, Rex Orange County thus far appears to have failed to shake-off his “cancelled” tag and reignite his career.
The stories of Oritse Williams and Rex Orange County may guide what Slowthai does next with his career – but only the general public will determine the outcome of his comeback.
Marcus Johnstone says he feels there “may be some hope” for the Northampton-based rapper.
“His attraction is to a certain demographic who may not see the need to ‘cancel’ him,” he says.
He adds that Slowthai’s future song writing will be “inspired by what he has endured”.
In his 2021 song CANCELLED, Slowthai asked: “How you gonna cancel me?”
“Said I won’t come back, I must be cancer, ain’t got much longer, then I made a comeback,” he rapped on the song.
Slowthai will now be hoping that comeback he predicted in a song three years ago will come to fruition – otherwise he will be left to find out the answer to “How you gonna cancel me?”.
